Step Brothers Information

Step Brothers is a 2008 American buddy slapstick comedy film starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. The screenplay was written by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, from a story written by them with Reilly. It was produced by Jimmy Miller and Judd Apatow, and directed by McKay.

The film was released on July 25, 2008, roughly two years after the same group of men wrote, produced, and starred in another comedy, Talladega Nights.

Plot

39 year-old Brennan Huff and 40 year-old Dale Doback (Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, respectively) are two unemployed, middle-aged and spoiled men who still live with (and are reliant on) their parents. They have no intention of moving out or finding jobs and behave childishly. When Brennan's mother Nancy (Mary Steenburgen) and Dale's father Robert (Richard Jenkins) marry, Brennan and Dale are forced to live with each other as step brothers. Their parents warn them that they must find jobs within a month or else be forced out of the house. When Brennan's younger brother Derek (Adam Scott) comes to visit with his oddly perfect family, he too mocks them and entices Dale to punch him in the face. Brennan is awed that Dale was able to stand up to Derek. Meanwhile, Brennan's sister-in-law Alice (Kathryn Hahn) who is also resentful of Derek, finds Dale's courage a turn on. Brennan and Dale discover their many shared interests and develop a strong personal bond. Meanwhile, Robert becomes irate at their continued immature behavior and forces them to look for jobs, going so far as to let the pair borrow suits for their upcoming job interviews.

Brennan and Dale take job interviews in which they perform very poorly by being rude to two of their potential employers and pointing out too many of their flaws and offending a third (Seth Rogen) when Dale passes gas for fifteen seconds. Robert and Nancy reveal their plans to retire and sail the world, and demand Brennan and Dale to find other living arrangements. Consequently, the two sabotage attempts to sell the house. Dale and Brennan, in their attempts to start an entertainment company, release their music video for "Boats N' Hoes" in front of their family, which shows them accidentally wrecking Robert's boat. Angered to his limits Robert walks out on Christmas Eve to go to the Cheesecake Factory for a drink, and upon his return later that evening, proclaims to Nancy that it was the "happiest he had been in months." The following day at Christmas dinner, he announces his intention to divorce Nancy, causing Brennan and Dale to break down.

Upon discovering that each blames the other for the divorce, the boys decide to go their separate ways. Brennan starts working for Derek's helicopter leasing firm and Dale works for a catering company.

Brennan, wanting to reunite the broken family, takes the initiative to arrange Derek's sales party, inviting Robert and Nancy. The party is a success and Robert ultimately encourages Brennan and Dale to be their eccentric child-at-heart selves again, seeing as they are now both miserable in their "adult" lives. Brennan and Dale then take to the stage and perform "Por ti Volare." Derek (like the rest of the audience) is so moved by the performance that he and Brennan make amends. Six months later, Robert and Nancy are reunited and move back into their old home, while Brennan and Dale form a successful entertainment company that runs karaoke events

Cast

• Will Ferrell as Brennan Huff, Nancy's 39-year-old son and Dale's stepbrother.
• John C. Reilly as Dale Doback, Robert's 40-year-old son and Brennan's stepbrother.
• Richard Jenkins as Robert Doback, Dale's once widower father, a physician, now married to Nancy.
• Mary Steenburgen as Nancy Huff-Doback, Brennan's divorced mother who meets Robert at a work conference.
• Adam Scott as Derek Huff, Brennan's successful younger brother and the main antagonist of the film, who has a Type A personality. He later made up with Brennan because of the song Brennan sung reminded Derek of the time he and Brennan were kids.
• Kathryn Hahn as Alice Huff, Derek's sex-crazed, emotionally crazed, negatively treated wife who has an affair with Dale.
• Andrea Savage as Denise or Dr. Angelface, Brennan's therapist and inadvertent love interest.
• Rob Riggle as Randy, Derek's best friend.
• Logan Manus as Chris Gardoki, an 11-year old who abuses Dale on a regular basis.
• Lurie Poston as Tommy.
• Elizabeth Yozamp as Tiffany.
• Ken Jeong as Employment Agent.
• Wayne Federman as Don, Dale's blind neighbor.
• Abigail Wagner as Erica, store owner.
• Carli Coleman as First Homebuyer.
• Brandon T. Webb as First Homebuyer.
• Phil LaMarr as Second Homebuyer.
• Matt Walsh as Drunk Corporate Guy.
• Seth Rogen as a Sporting Goods Manager.
• Gillian Vigman as Pam, an interviewer for Brennan and Dale.
• Sarah Taschetta as the chewbacca mask
• Maddy Van Peenen Sarah's stunt devil
• Joe Klingelhoffer Will Ferrel's stunt devil
• Horatio Sanz as the lead singer of "Uptown Girl""?the 80s Billy Joel cover band"?that Brennan hires for the Catalina Wine Mixer.

Critical reception

Step Brothers received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 53% of critics gave the film a positive review. At the website Metacritic, which utilizes a normalized rating system, the film earned a mixed rating of 51/100 based on 33 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film 1 1/2 out of 4 stars and stated, "When did comedies get so mean? Step Brothers has a premise that might have produced a good time at the movies, but when I left, I felt a little unclean.".

Home media release

The film was released for home video on December 2, 2008 in a single-disc rated edition, a single-disc unrated edition and a 2-disc unrated edition. The film generated sales an estimated 3.87 million units in DVD and Blu-ray, totally $63.7 million. For the home video release, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Adam McKay recorded a commentary track for the film is mostly sung, accompanied by Jon Brion; the track covers "the movie-making process [and] their characters' offscreen lives" in remarks that range "from the inspired to the irritatingly prolonged, but when Ferrell and Reilly really get into a good groove, they're actually funnier than the main feature."

Rap album

Adam McKay tweeted that John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell would be producing a Step Brothers rap album, set to be produced by Mos Def. The release date for the album is unknown.

Sequel

Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly have talked about a sequel. Reilly had the idea.

Adam McKay was also interviewed about the possible sequel. "We're kicking around the idea of Step Brothers 2," he said. "We feel like there's way more fat to be mined there. While it isn't quite the legend that Anchorman is, it has built kind of a nice following. We think it could be a pretty fun one." He added that Ferrell and Reilly's characters would be mature and have jobs. "One of them's married and has a kid. They're still kind of goofballs but they've taken three or four steps. Then we have an idea for something happens that knocks him back to square one, and one of the brothers, John C. Reilly sort of instigates it, like ?we can't take this anymore.' And things go really bad, their lives kind of fall apart. They have to pull it back together is sort of the basic structure." McKay has also said that ideas that were not used in the first film may be used in the sequel.